 Before you get started building your business, an important first step is to create an ideal customer profile. Your ICP describes your perfect customer. Written as one individual, it’s not the only person who will buy from you, but the best. This is who you should focus your marketing efforts on trying to reach. The data in your ICP determines every decision that comes afterward, so it’s important to create this profile first and foremost. What Your ICP Should Include A good ideal customer profile includes two types of data: demographic and psychographic. Demographic data tells you who your target audience is. It includes things like age, location, economic status, marital status, language, and so on. Psychographic data tells you how people think, feel, and behave, and it’s a bit trickier to obtain. However, this information is in many ways even more important than demographics. You should try to learn as much as possible about your ideal customer’s core values, their beliefs, their aspirations, and the problems and issues they face so you can help solve them. Know Your Business Creating your ICP should be guided by knowledge about your company. You can already tell somewhat who your products and services best serve. Consider what you offer. Who would benefit best from it? Figure out your unique strengths and create a unique value proposition. This is a statement that describes specifically what you do and what sets you apart from other similar businesses. If you’re already in business, look at your current customers and identify your biggest brand advocates. These are the individuals who buy most from you and interact most with you. In addition to past and current customers, you may also consider where you want your business to go. What will you be offering a year from now and who is the target market for that? Collect and Analyze Data A good ideal customer profile contains objective data, not assumptions. You have to connect with your target market and gather this data from them. You can get data on your target market both directly and indirectly. Direct methods include asking questions, holding focus groups, running surveys and polls, and so on. Indirect methods include looking at social media profiles, watching and participating in online discussions, and looking at metrics such as web traffic and sales data. Building Your Ideal Customer Profile Is Ongoing Once you have a good ideal customer profile, you’re ready to get started planning your marketing strategy. But creating an ICP is a task that’s never truly finished. There may be changes in the market or changes in your business that will require you to update your ICP. Keep collecting data about your target market and revise accordingly. Gradually, your profile will become increasingly refined and effective. Do you want to learn more about creating the perfect customer profile for your market? Check out the course, “IDEAL CLIENT PROFILE”, which teaches you the A to Z of creating and using your ideal customer profile and helps you achieve your business goals. TO LEARN MORE, CLICK HERE About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.
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Basing Your Ideal Customer Profile on Assumptions You may know a great deal about your customers, but you need objective data from the market, not just assumptions. Your assumptions could be wrong or could be missing something vital. Once you start researching your target audience, you may encounter some surprises. There might be trends you hadn’t noticed before. Not Being Specific Your ideal customer profile should identify one single individual who benefits most from your products and services. This isn’t the only person who will buy from you, but the ideal person to focus your resources on trying to reach. If you try to be everything for everyone, you’ll end up pleasing no one. Ignoring Patterns As you go about creating your ideal customer profile, you’ll start seeing patterns. You should take note of all these trends and include them, even if they don’t seem strictly relevant to your business. All information could be useful in crafting your marketing message and targeted advertising. Forgetting Psychological Data When we think of customer profiles, it’s natural to think of demographics such as age, location, and income level. But don’t forget to also include psychological factors such as core values, buying behavior, and dreams and aspirations. In fact, this information could be even more important. You need to make an emotional connection with your target market. Your marketing should speak to their values, beliefs, and challenges. This is how you demonstrate the ways your offering can benefit them. Failing to Gather Indirect Data Reaching out to customers and holding focus groups are excellent ways to get data from your target audience. But don’t forget to also obtain indirect data. People won’t always tell you what you need to know if you ask them. On the other hand, you can listen to their conversations and watch their behavior to learn even more about them. Setting It and Forgetting It Once you have a strong ideal customer profile based on objective data from your market, you’re ready to get started offering your products and services to them. But your ICP is not something you can simply set once and then forget about. You’ll have to revise your ICP occasionally due to changes in the market or your customers’ tastes. When you launch a new product or service, you’ll have to adjust accordingly. It’s also helpful to brush up your ICP from time to time with new information from the market. Keep in steady touch with your customers so you can keep your ideal customer profile and marketing strategy up to date. Do you want to learn more about getting to know your audience? Check out my course, “IDEAL CLIENT PROFILE’, which teaches you the A to Z of creating an effective ideal customer profile and helps you achieve your business goals. Learn More HERE. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  All customers aren’t made equal. Some will buy from you and some won’t. What if you spend all your time, energy, and ad dollars on the ones who won’t buy? If you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll end up appealing to no one, so it’s essential to target the right people. Your ideal customer profile helps you do that. Your ICP informs all the major decisions you’ll make, so it’s an important first step. What Information Your Ideal Customer Profile Needs Your ideal customer profile needs two types of data – demographic and psychographic. Demographics tell who your ideal buyer is. It includes information like age, geographic location, language, marital status, earnings, family, education level, and lifestyle. Even though all this information might not seem strictly relevant to your business, it should be included if there are trends. Psychographic information is your buyer’s behavior, values, aspirations, and attitudes. Pay attention especially to their buying behavior, such as how they make purchases, how much money they spend, how they feel about spending money. It’s also important to find out what problems your audience faces. Look for challenges or issues they’re trying to overcome. If you can provide the help they need, they’ll become loyal customers. Objective Data, Not Assumptions The data in your ICP needs to be based on objective feedback from the market, not just your assumptions. You might already have a gut feeling about who your target market is. You can tell some things about them by looking at your products and services and the problems they solve. However, you need to research and use objective data as much as possible. As you discover more about your audience, there will be some surprises along the way. If it’s all based on assumptions, you might miss the mark. How to Learn about Your Market and Build Your ICP You can obtain this objective data through direct and indirect methods. Direct methods include interacting and engaging with your audience. Listen to their conversations. Ask questions and start conversations. Run polls and surveys. Reach out to people and create opportunities for you to learn about them. Indirect methods are important as well. There are some things people won’t tell you, but you can learn through their behavior. Look at website metrics, social media activity, buying behavior, and how they interact with competitors. How to Use Your Ideal Customer Profile Your ICP is essential because it crafts your marketing message. Your message needs to speak directly to your audience and in order to do that, you need to know them well. You’ll also use it for ad targeting. When you create ads, you can choose parameters based on the demographics of your buyer persona. It will determine what content you create and help you understand which leads are worth putting resources into pursuing. Do you want to learn more about reaching the right audience with the right message? Check out the course, "IDEAL CLIENT PROFILE”, which teaches you the A to Z of creating an effective ideal customer profile and helps you achieve your business goals. FIND OUT MORE HERE! About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality. Your ideal customer profile is the foundation of everything in your business. It informs all your sales and marketing activities. You need to know your customer well before you can meet their needs with your unique products and services. Once you have a solid ICP, here’s what you do with it.  What Is an Ideal Customer Profile?
An ideal customer profile is a representation of the perfect fit for your business’s offerings. It’s not the only person who will buy from you, but the one who is most likely to, and therefore this is where you should focus your marketing efforts. It includes demographic information as well as the person’s attitude, beliefs, and concerns. Clarifying Your Marketing Message Your marketing needs to speak directly to your audience and their needs. You have a solution to their problem, and you need to speak to them in their language. The data your profile yields is essential for understanding how to communicate with your audience. Even if you have a truly wonderful product that perfectly meets their needs, the wrong messaging won’t reach them. Targeting Ads The data in your ICP is essential when designing an ad campaign. You can choose the parameters of your ad according to customer demographics. The better you know these demographics, the more narrowly you can target and get your ads in front of the right people. This helps you get the best value for your ad dollars. Choosing Marketing Channels Successful marketing involves going to your target audience, engaging with them, and putting your offerings in front of them. In order to figure out where your potential customers hang out online, you need a firm grasp on who they are. Your ideal customer profile is used to do this. Lead Scoring Lead scoring is an analytical process businesses use to evaluate how likely it is that a lead will convert to a paying customer. When you start engaging with a new prospect, you can use your ICP to determine whether they’ll buy and how much of your resources are worth trying to sell to them. Setting Product Prices Your ideal customer profile includes you customer’s attitude toward spending money and making purchases. You need to know this in order to set the right prices that are low enough your customer will buy but high enough to accurately reflect their image of your product’s value. Your Position in the Market Even similar businesses that offer similar products and services have slightly different customer bases. Your ICP will help you understand how your customers are different. Even more importantly, it shows you how your products and services uniquely meet their needs. The first step to doing all of the above is to create a detailed ideal customer profile that includes demographic information about who your audience members are, but also data about their values, attitudes, aspirations, and issues. Do you want to learn more about creating the right ideal customer profile? Check out the course, IDEAL CLIENT PROFILE, which teaches you the A to Z of creating customer profiles and helps you achieve your business goals. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE! About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality. |
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